Chapter 1/Episode 1: Dr Smyth in London

 Click here to view the PCs: PCs

Oriental Club. Stratford House

ram's head snuff box

Sept 17, 1922: Typical evening at the Oriental Club within the Stratford House filled with a thick cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke, and a Ram’s head snuff box for the non-smokers. Dr Julius Smyth invited us as his guests per his recent foray into matters of parapsychology. He leans upon us to investigate a storied ghostship sighting in Scotland’s Loch Lomond, “I’m collecting material for my Challenger Lecture on Jan 3^rd. I want you to prove or disprove the apparition to support my studies.”

Professor Julius Arthur Smyth: heavy-set 59yo Englishman scholar (Litt.D, Ph.D) who now devotes himself to research. Famed for his whiskers and curling moustache= air of a friendly walrus. Disgusting preference for foul, obsidian-hued Balkan Sobranje tobacco; his erudite after-dinner stories, and hearty laugh.  Lives and travels extensively on the Continent. Specialties are European languages and archaeology.  While in London: maintains a town house in St. John’s Wood. Undergoing renovation to enlarge his library, forcing guests to stay at hotels. Spends most of his time lecturing at the Univ of London or reading at the British Museum Library. Member of the Oriental Club but infrequent appearances.  His country home is an estate not far from Cambridge, where his wife Margaret died in 1919. Manservant Beddows is his: friend, assistant, confidant, and only companion.

Train ride to Edinburgh then carriages west to Loch Lomond, staying in a rustic village: King’s Head pub & tavern. Local Conner McGregor tells of the ship, “Only during vernal or autumnal equinox. Pleasure barge went missing in 1870.” Dr Smyth passionately documented everything as we set up tents and tripod cameras along the loch shoreline where the ship had been reported sighted.

Midnight: bluish glow of the ghostship riding waves out of sync to the real waves. Rowboats to investigate: Norville climbed aboard the ghostship and spots a ghostly steward (slow motion as if another dimensional time) serving drinks from an 1870 time-period decanter. [Like “Groundhog Day”] The scenes repeat in a loop pattern for almost 5 minutes. Moving to the aft: witnesses the Capt writing in his logbook (also slow motion). Soon, the ship fades from view.

On the train ride return to London, Smyth tells of other verified ghostly sightings, “I have a silent flicker movie of a woman descending the stairs.”

 

ghostship

ghostly woman descending stairs

Wed, Jan 3^rd, 1923: his Challenger Lecture prepared for his wealthy donors- coat & tails & top-hats to accompany elegant evening gowns. A ritzy affair with us seated at the guest table. Mehmet Maryket: a swarthy man with a Turkish accent, approaches. “My country is in chaos. My interest is if England also believes in the supernatural.” As expected, Smyth’s lecture focuses on the poltergeist and what he calls “travelers- haunters linked to another dimension.” Yet when the lights came on at the end of the lecture, Mehmet was gone.

Jan 6^th: newspaper article about Dr. Smyth’s house burned down on the 5^th. Same newspaper with an article about “The same man died 3 times last night!”

Smyth’s office (at the University of London): other Professors upset at the Smyth news. Within his office: books laid out, accordion folder with his notes, and a journal dated 1890. All of which Norville takes. Orson asks the telephone operator the last number called from Smyth: the Oriental Club. Smyth’s secretary describes Beddows as spending his entire life working for the Smyth family, for generations, “Inseparable.” “Why yes, a Turkish man DID visit the day of the lecture, but Prof Smyth wasn’t in.”

Onward to Scotland Yard: Detective Sgt Rigby…who Orson pissed off! Norville warms up to Inspector Fleming. “Mehmet is an interesting case. Each of the 3 bodies had a Paris telegram with orders to meet in London. There is another Mehmet who lives in London.”

Emile quietly mused, “Like a quartz refracts light, so the ghostship is a reflection out of sync in time. And this Mehmet and his multiple reflections suggest a quartz refraction of something dishonest. Give me gemstones as the purest expression of order in a chaotic world: perfect, eternal, unchanging.”

Denied access to see the bodies, we return to the Oriental Club where we find a business card from Dr. Smyth:

NEXT SESSION: Chapter 1, Episode 2: The Blood-Red Fez